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First off, thank you frederic, I had a JDM front-end delivered on 10-01-2012, and your post was like a free payday!

I made and tested my first shield based on frederic's PDF, but found I had a lot of glare in strange places, an orange color on the cut-off, and the cut-off was not as sharp as I wanted.

More than likely ALL of these issues were a problem between the shield and the floor...in other words me.

I decided to modify the shield design a bit to better emulate the OEM dimensions and curvature, and am extremely happy with the results.
My horrible post-install shots doesn't do them a bit of justice. The cut-off is straight and sharp, the color output is a bright (was blinding at first compared to my beat up halogens), cool white, with a blue to violet appearance right on the edges.
No glare to speak of, I've walked past both sides of the vehicle checking from above and below the cut-off, had someone drive it past me while in a vehicle in the opposite lane, and in two months I haven't been flashed by a single person.

As frederic stated regarding material, use aluminum flashing, it's used for home roofing and siding. You can find it in 10-foot rolls of varying widths (approximately $10) or pre-cut sizes like 6"x6" ($1-$2) at Lowe's or Home Depot. You don't need any special snips, just a quality pair of sharp scissors.

I found printing the PDF, then cutting the design from paper, then taping it to the piece of flashing made cutting it accurately the easiest.

I had a small hammer and dolly auto body repair kit laying around so, once I was finished cutting, I used a finishing hammer and an anvil to tap it nice and flat.

Then it just a matter of bending the curve of the shield. I did this by forming a rough curve by eye just using my fingers, then took the JDM shield, aligned the centers, ensured each side/end of the curve matched the JDM shield, then with a flat-sided dolly I rolled it over the aluminum shield using the JDM shield as a template or mold. Then finished shaping it up by hand.

The pics showing shields are a comparison of the different shields, (from left to right) shield based on frederic's PDF, shield based on my changes (see the "version 2" PDF), and also the OEM JDM shield in a couple of shots.

-Let me know if anyone has trouble with the links and I'll upload elsewhere.
-I intended to include frederic's version with my own so both could be grabbed at the same time, but decided that it might confuse someone.-All credit goes to OP!Hope someone finds this useful, I did.

Glad you were able to make it work! Your end result is very nice. It looks like you replicated the JDM slope instead of the TSX like small step. How do you like them on the road? These bowls sure have their flaws but doing a custom shield really help bring them back to life! Thanks for posting your work and results and your updated pdf.

It looks like you managed to do all that but I'll still put some kore details to try and help the next people who will try this. The orange is when the shield is too close to the bulb. I am pretty sure you cant just print the pdf out and have a great result without tweaking, given the many variables and tight tolerances for optimal operation.

You do have to tweak curvature and distance with bulb for sharp cutoff. But also the correct vertical and horizontal position so the bottom of the cutoff step is centered (not block too much of the beam, I like to cut the beam at its widest to get best width).

The color at cutoff and also its sharpness tells you what tweak you need to do. You want just a slight hint of blue or almost no color at like 25ft. And at short distances like 6ft you will have some orange yellow which is normal, it will transform to a sharp cutoff at 25 ft and then progressively to a blue band in the distance. Too much blue too early will give a blurry cutoff in the distance. No color at 25ft means you are perfectly focused for that distance. At longer distance blue will start appearing.

For instance if the center is orange at 25ft you have to bend the whole shield stightly towards front. If there is too much blue then you need to bend the shield towards the bulb. To bend the shield I was using a small screwdriver through the small hole atthe bottom to push on the shield and see the immediate result on the wall. You do have to be careful and not touch the bulb return wire or you'll take a discharge!

If the center is perfeclty sharp but the sides are orange, it means the sides are too close to the bulb at this exact place where the cutoff is orange (i.e. not bent enough). Then when you move the curved area you have to recheck the center because it likely moved, and so on. Also in the process it is possible the cutoff bows because you bent it forward or backwards in an attempt to focus the cutoff. In that case I removed the shield and twisted the two wings slightly and resumed the tweaking.

You basically tweak the whole cut off based on this until it is sharp all along the cutoff.

My RX350BX looks completely messed up at 6ft, full of orange and triple superbowed cutoff, but that all focus correctly at longer distance. It is like a camera focus. It cannot be sharp and adjusted for color at all distances, you adjust it for one distance for an all around good performance.

By the way in your output pictures 2 and 3, it looks like you have a void on the foreground, not that its a bad thing to have a reduced foreground, but I dont recall having that void on mine. Were your bowl chrome all nice and unburnt? Anything special you noticed on the bowl (would not happen to have pics do you?)

The headlight assemblies looked like they had never been installed, very good condition.

The reflector housing was perfect, no discolorations.

The blub housing (see below pic) was also new and shiny. What I did notice when working on the right-side after completing the left was that the bulb housing has a series of raised ridges on two sides. I noted it's orientation and checked the left side and found it was incorrect. So joy-oh-joy I broke the left-side assembly down again and corrected.

I can say there was a noticeable difference (reduction) in foreground output (first few feet in front of vehicle) but nothing major, and more importantly the removal of beam of glare that was shooting out to the left.
I suspect these raised areas are in place to generate intentional glare to better illuminate overhead and road-side signs.

I will try to remember to grab the camera next time I run out and take some better pics. There isn't really anything to demonstrate the beam pattern in my yard.

(We live on 16 acres and have a gravel road that is 4/10ths of a mile)

Oh..

I also ensured that the edges of the cut-off were as flat, smooth, and uniform as possible by carefully running the blade of the scissors along it. But care and patience is needed, I ended up making a second shield after screwing the first up being obsessive compulsive.

Nice mod. 2 questions:
(1) Why not use the original, trim along the lower edge, and add a small strip of sheet metal for the cutoff? That way, the distance between the lens and reflector bowl won't change.
(2) There is probably a change in the beam width intensity profile when moving the cutoff down (as you indicated); the reflector bowl has a somewhat ellipsoid profile left to right. So, even though the distance lighting is probably improved, the side beam may look different; I'm thinking in the context of the different regions you drew out as projected on the road in another thread.

Recently I was thinking about how one could more easily get a good result without having to understand too much about the shield tweaking vs the results on the beam.

My initial method was to manually tweak the shield until you get the optimal results. Tsolyankee's method was to use the oem shield as a forming tool. Satrya's idea was mounting a smaller strip of aluminium on the shield, my initial opinion about this was that it would make it impossible to tweak the curvature differently from the oem shield, so in a sense, more complicated in my situation and restricting for what I was trying to achieve.

But I am reconsidering Satrya's idea and seeing it from a different perspective: for people who dont know how to tweak the curvature manually, it does actually make it simpler. My other concern was the added metal would make the shield bigger as in blocking more of the beam, unless you buffed some of the oem shield to prevent it from being in the way.

But maybe you could mount the small strip on the unmodified shoeld, and lower the shield by adding spacers at the bottom where it mounts (some trimming would be needed where the shield mounts to allow for shimming). This would avoid the buffing I mentioned above, keeping the oem shield unaltered. Unaltered shield would help in mounting the new shield piece level, and cutoff step properly centered, given you have the oem one just below for alignment (still trying to think of a reversible method to attach the shield add-on, jbweld seems like best for holding up, but if your cutoff needs tweaking you are SOL).

I have some ideas about tweaking the oem shields too, I will probably at some point make an attempt with a large file (the idea about a large/wide file is it would help keeping straight work, tha is if you use it at the correct angle). The oem shield has multiple steps in the shield, and I'd like to progressively mod the shield to see the effect on the beam (the main edge of the shield has three steps and there is an additional shield inwards that probably blocks the blue refraction innthe cutoff). When I do my testing I'll make sure to snap some pics.

Did another custom shield, this time easier to adjust because it is made of 2 pieces, saw that on hidplanet a while ago and thougt it would be easier to tweak. Pretty good I think considering how pitted are the bowls. But they would definately benefit from foreground limiters.

All pics with camera in manual mode, same settings, same ballast and bulb.

Stock JDM:

Custom shield JDM:

Stock TSX projector for comparison:

How the new custom shield looks:

I'll snap another pic showing how are the two pieces, it will be clearer how they attatch together.

Well in fact it does, it is not visible in the pics because it is lost in the ceiling, but I noticed it as soon as I turned them on. Would need a larger back holder plate to block the light from escaping.

I was wondering why the OEM shield made the output completely colorless and also dim close to the cutoff. I knew it had something to do with the thick and kind of double layer cutoff shield, so I started grinding it to remove material and make it thinner. Not that there is any use other than experimenting, thought it would be interesting. Here are the results of partially grinding the shield:

You seem to have a lot of time on your hands! Haha but nice work, I was going to make curved shields when I installed tsx-r lenses in my sti projectors but I just didn't have the time to fab and test everything. Looks like you're doing a great job, 2 piece curved shield is definitely the way to go.

With a custom shield, the only limit to how good it's going to be is how good you are at making and tweaking the shield, and understanding the basics of the projector optics (which movememt ok the shield causes which effect on the beam). With the ebay shields the tweaking is very limited, but there is no hassle.

I personally prefer doing the shields myself and have control over the result than the more expensive option for which the results are hard to evaluate because nobody seems to be using them/post good pics of the results.

If you are of the meticulous type and confident you can do the precision work and take the time to understand, go for a custom shield, you will likely end up with better results. If you tend to be of the opposite type then you are probably better to put more money on the ready made shields and have a somewhat guaranteed success.

To O.C.D. I am quoting my post from earlier in this thread because this is where I kind of summed up what tweaks does what on an aluminum flashing custom shield.

Quote:

Originally Posted by frederik

Glad you were able to make it work! Your end result is very nice. It looks like you replicated the JDM slope instead of the TSX like small step. How do you like them on the road? These bowls sure have their flaws but doing a custom shield really help bring them back to life! Thanks for posting your work and results and your updated pdf.

It looks like you managed to do all that but I'll still put some kore details to try and help the next people who will try this. The orange is when the shield is too close to the bulb. I am pretty sure you cant just print the pdf out and have a great result without tweaking, given the many variables and tight tolerances for optimal operation.

You do have to tweak curvature and distance with bulb for sharp cutoff. But also the correct vertical and horizontal position so the bottom of the cutoff step is centered (not block too much of the beam, I like to cut the beam at its widest to get best width).

The color at cutoff and also its sharpness tells you what tweak you need to do. You want just a slight hint of blue or almost no color at like 25ft. And at short distances like 6ft you will have some orange yellow which is normal, it will transform to a sharp cutoff at 25 ft and then progressively to a blue band in the distance. Too much blue too early will give a blurry cutoff in the distance. No color at 25ft means you are perfectly focused for that distance. At longer distance blue will start appearing.

For instance if the center is orange at 25ft you have to bend the whole shield stightly towards front. If there is too much blue then you need to bend the shield towards the bulb. To bend the shield I was using a small screwdriver through the small hole atthe bottom to push on the shield and see the immediate result on the wall. You do have to be careful and not touch the bulb return wire or you'll take a discharge!

If the center is perfeclty sharp but the sides are orange, it means the sides are too close to the bulb at this exact place where the cutoff is orange (i.e. not bent enough). Then when you move the curved area you have to recheck the center because it likely moved, and so on. Also in the process it is possible the cutoff bows because you bent it forward or backwards in an attempt to focus the cutoff. In that case I removed the shield and twisted the two wings slightly and resumed the tweaking.

You basically tweak the whole cut off based on this until it is sharp all along the cutoff.

My RX350BX looks completely messed up at 6ft, full of orange and triple superbowed cutoff, but that all focus correctly at longer distance. It is like a camera focus. It cannot be sharp and adjusted for color at all distances, you adjust it for one distance for an all around good performance.

Late to the party, but I'm still rolling with the shields I originally made. Still no problems, good output, cutoff is unchanged, no aiming\alignment issues (only needed to adjust once and that was after taking the front bumper and fenders off to paint). Most important to me was my ability to see and without blinding other drivers. This has been achieved since day one (they do look hella good too). Like your modifications to your original frederik, ill give yours a look ocd.